What Is Product Review And The Importance In Sales

Why Product Review is important

Customer product reviews play a crucial role in any industry’s experience. They serve several important purposes from the sales process to brand recognization. It plays a crucial role in every business either ecommerce, service providing, sales funnel, or improving product quality. ThinkWithGoogle explains how marketers are using customer feedback or testimonials to boost their sales.

What is Product Review

It is the customer’s voice after purchasing the product/service from the business. They give their opinion after using the product. If the product/service fits into their expectation then they wrote positive feedback and gives a 5-star rating out of 5. Else they are free to write a negative review and explain why the product is bad.

According to consumer law, no service force consumer to write a bad review they paid for it. As it is their right.

They can submit the review at the business site by browsing it and finding the review writing form. It is essential for businesses to show both positive and negative reviews on websites.

The consumer is also free to write feedback on various websites like google business, TrustPoilte, Clutch, Yelp, online consumer forums, etc.

When other people land on your website and read the review good and bad reviews both will lead them to the conclusion to proceed further or not.

Businesses can take different-different customer feedback about their service/product over the phone or ask them to submit the form, or write an email. In whatever medium they are confirmable.

Why It is Important

It influences the customer’s product purchasing decision why it is important, and how the product can help them if they bought it. Money is important for everyone. Most shoppers prefer to know the best deal for that, so they read the reviews of products and deals to know other people’s opinions on whether it is going to be worth it or not.

Over 90% of consumers read online reviews before making a purchase decision, and 84% of consumers trust online reviews as much as a personal recommendation.

According to a survey conducted by PowerReviews

The images and description of the product are extremely important for customers to know how the product is working. There are much research has been done to know why customer seeks existing customer review before they proceed to buy the product.

Getting a higher number of quality product reviews and ratings will increase your brand value and build trust with new customers. Here are some points that will re-build your mind about why product review is important.

Customer Feedback Facilitates the Social Proof

87% of shoppers surveyed say knowing they got a good deal is important to them when deciding which brand or retailer to buy from
– ThinkWithGoogle

Product reviews serve as a form of social proof, as customers are more likely to trust the opinions of other customers who have already purchased and used the product. Today, customers can leave reviews not just on the website where they bought the product but also on other platforms too.

For example, websites that give act as mediators for consumer service and business, review websites such as Trustpilot, G2, Clutch, etc, social media, and video sites. Many websites offer consumers to tag the business where they bought the product, which clearly affects the reputation and sales.

Reading the reviews on various sites which hold the authority works as social proof. Thus, people can easily make up their minds about the product and speed up the sale process.

Improves Customer Engagement

Product reviews can serve as a two-way communication channel between customers and merchants. This can help to enhance customer engagement and build a loyal customer base. When a customer wrote that he/she is facing an issue with the product and a prompt reply from customer service gives satisfaction to the customer, someone is listening from the business.

It builds the trust of the customer and hence customer frequently comes to your website and will willing to spend money on your service or product. It creates mutual understanding between them.

Boosts Customer Confidence

customer feedback about purchassing behaviour after covid-19

Product reviews provide potential customers with valuable insights and information about a product, helping them make informed purchasing decisions. This can increase customer confidence and lead to higher conversion rates.

I personally read comments and reviews of the product before purchasing the product. I simply go to the next product when i see a lot of negative ratings. Only carefully examining the review, i make the purchase from a trusted website.

Customer reviews not only add the value to brand and product but also drastically boost the customer’s confidence and they will purchase the product even if the product has a 4-star rating.

Provides Valuable Testimonial

Quality product reviews can provide valuable feedback to merchants, helping them identify areas for improvement and make changes to their offerings. This can lead to increased customer satisfaction and repeat business.

When you encourage the customers to write insightful feedback about the service you offered them, then it will add extra value not only to your business, it helps new customers to know the pro and con of service and they know this feedback is written by a genuine person who bought the product or service not just a random computer bot or hired someone to write the feedback for you.

Improving Product Quality

Product reviews help eCommerce websites to identify areas of improvement in their products. Testimonials from customers can be used to make changes to the product and improve its quality.

It is really important for a business to reply back to all reviews no matter if it is negative or positive customer review, just do not remove or hide the negative feedback from the list. You can speak to them or write an email stating that we sent your feedback to our quality team or authority to look into your matter. Thus, the team will check and implement the necessary steps to avoid the same situation again in the future.

Nothing is perfect in this world, everything needs improvement. Businesses can save a lot of money and time by hearing the voice of customers. They often suggest what can be done correctly in order to give your offer more reliable to others the next time they come to you.

Influencing Purchasing Decisions

Product reviews have a significant impact on purchasing decisions. In fact, many customers use product reviews to make their final decision on whether or not to purchase a product.

88% of consumers trust online reviews as much as they trust personal recommendations, while 72% of consumers say positive reviews make them trust a local business more.

Study by BrightLocal

Testimonials from other customers provide valuable information to customer who is on a journey to purchase the item, allowing them to make informed decisions about whether a particular product is right for them or not.

Enhances Product Visibility

Positive reviews can improve a product’s visibility and ranking in search results, making it more likely for customers to discover it. It does not matter where you offer your service either on 3rd party website or your own website. Most of the 3rd party services give more value to customer reviews in their search algorithm.

The more you have positive reviews, the more chances are getting your offer at the top of the search results. It increases inquiries and leads. In the last 2-3 years digital world gets significantly improved because the price of electronic devices such as mobile, laptops, computers, and the internet goes down.

You can show showcase customer testimonials or reviews on offline/online events, social media sites, promotional videos, webinars, attracting investors, etc. Products with reviews will stand out and the sale percentage is higher.


Enhances Brand Reputation

consumer insights consumer trends product review video watch time is 50 thousand a year

Positive reviews can enhance the brand’s reputation and increase customer loyalty, while negative reviews can be an opportunity for the brand to improve and address customer complaints.
Loyal customers repeatedly buy products from the same brand that they like the most. They also spread positive words in their circle, also refer others to get products too.

It adds a new customer base for the brand. Businesses can collaborate to know their pain points, and what could be solutions. Then create products that address the customer issues. It will get the business to be one step ahead of competitors and save costs and resources.

Constantly improving the services/product, also established the brand value in the market. It tells the customer that your business is serious and doing hard work to get things correct as soon as possible.

Boosts Transparency and Trust

Honest and detailed product reviews can increase transparency and build trust between customers and the brand. It means people give testimonials or write reviews or create review videos of products about what is good and bad when they receive it and when they try to use it.

It consists of what was the product’s condition when they received it, what was the return process, is the product/deal worth the money they spend or customer representative behavior, and is it contains the help guide copy or number the customer can reach when they get into trouble with products or deals.

This kind of review shows how a brand or business cares about its customers. If customers see only positive or bad reviews, one-sided reviews will force customers to think that the business is playing with the customer or that the product/deal is really bad. Business should focus on product/deal that helps the customer not removing the bad comments from the review section. It will make the customer angrier.

Improves Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Product reviews can also help improve a website’s SEO, as they provide relevant and valuable content for search engines to index. Search Engines are more conscience when it comes to online purchases, they constantly improve their algorithm to avoid fraud and untrusted websites out of first-page rank.

Search engines prefer the website that has a positive review to rank over the website which does have no review at all. Google alone has 3 ranking factors related to customer feedback.

Here is Some Research Conducted in the Last 5 Years Showing the Importance of Product Review in the Sale Process

  1. A study by Reevoo states that reviews increase the likelihood of purchase by 18%.
  2. Moreover, a study by Spiegel Research Center shows that product reviews can increase the conversion rate by 14.6%.
  3. Another study by Bazaarvoice found that 63% of consumers are more likely to purchase from a site if it has product ratings and reviews.
  4. 84% of consumers think online reviews that are more than 3 months old are irrelevant, according to BrightLocal.
  5. According to Nielsen, 92% of people are influenced by word-of-mouth media and trust recommendations from friends and family.
  6. 65% of shoppers trust products more when reviews have user-generated content such as photos and videos. (PowerReviews, 2019) 
  7. 15.44% or 3 of 8 factors that make up Google’s algorithm pie are Review Signals (review quantity, review diversity, review velocity, etc.), making online reviews a vital search ranking factor. (Moz)
  8. About 40 positive customer experiences are needed to undo the damage of 1 negative review.  (Inc.) 
  9. 86% of people hesitate to do business with a company if it has negative online reviews – Invespcro

Website That Manage Product Review And Customer Feedback Effectively

Here are some websites that take quality product reviews from the customer/user and have 99.99% uptime. All the free websites where you can list your business and get feedback from customers easily. These websites offer various incentives when a customer writes a review on their website.

Almost all websites offer to embed code for businesses to embed the review count and overall rating on their sites, to gain customer trust and faster the sale process. I have categorized the website according to its working zone. You will find the list below.

Prefer Local Business

  • Yelp
  • Citysearch
  • Foursquare

Company Full profile with review

Angie’s List
TestFreaks
GoodFirms

Online Product/Service/Company Review

  • Trustpilot
  • clutch
  • G2
  • Choice
  • Glassdoor
  • TripAdvisor
  • ConsumerReports
  • Consumer Affairs

Conclusion

These statistics show the immense importance of product reviews in the eCommerce industry. By providing a platform for customers to share their experiences and opinions about products, customer feedback helps other customers make informed purchasing decisions. Additionally, customer testimonials also help businesses identify areas for improvement and enhance their products and services to better meet customer needs.

We are an official partner of OpenCart and offering the service for 10 years. If you are looking for an extension that will get a quality product review from the customer for your OpenCart website then the TMD OpenCart product review module will help you.

We are also experts in the OpenCart customization service. Just create the support ticket to share detail about the project. One of our support team members will contact you as soon as possible.

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